Lucky_Strike

Heheh, yes CM reacts in a very psychedelic way to ReShade . I think it's the Home button to bring up the ReShade interface and the End button to toggle it on and off. You can customise just about everything to make it work just how you like. And yes there are tons of options. I chucked out all the shaders that either don't work in CM or that do things I'm uninterested in just to narrow it down a bit. Because CM is not a modern game the GUI is tied into the game very closely, so ReShade will affect it as well as the actual gameplay. What you need to do is to create a mask for your screen which is like an alpha channel so that the GUI elements are masked from the effects - don't forget the compass and small area for the display text at the top. This means you can have your game running without losing the GUI. The mask looks something like this: Do a screen capture of your whole screen with a CM game running at your normal play resolution, then convert it to greyscale and draw over the areas you need masked, the fuzzy one is a softer mask just for the important game text. Save it as a png, then it needs to go into a folder within your game .exe folder - textures or something like that. It has to be activated by a specific masking shader - there are also masking shaders for making stuff like black strips top and bottom for a cinematic widescreen look. The DoF uses a kind of mask as well, but one that is already in the game to determine areas of focus/depth. As the game engine is relatively primitive, it's only got about three - near, middle and far - finding the boundaries and making adjustments is the key. I'll try to do a few screen grabs later to show you how it might work with the specific shaders I use. I steered clear of much of the AA stuff as it's quite heavy on the GPU so needs one with a lot of grunt to do the work. Good thing, as you discovered, is that it's very easy to uninstall or disable, and can't do any damage to your game installations as it's self contained.

No doubt better than a 17th century diet ... gruel and weak ale. But I doubt your physic knows what a pizza is - you might even get burnt at the stake for inventing such devilry.

Since you can't relax on your holiday withut knowing the answer to this I did ... When you get back, copy the smoke black.bmp to your Z folder and rename it smoke gray.bmp Then you can drive around polluting the countryside with your sooty exhaust fumes - note that you may be charged extra to drive into some cities because of your emissions ...

That's what I said as well - maybe this IS JM's holiday, a week of just CM forums - pizza, beer, CM non-stop

Of course another possibility is using one of the cloud PC services like Shadow or Loudplay or Parsec or GeForce Now I seriously considered these when looking at upgrades to my PC, but my setup is alright for now. However if I have to upgrade in the future I may well go down the cloud computing route - may look a bit pricey but actually it works out quite reasonably if you look at it medium to long term, especially with the cost of decent CPU/GPUs these days.

Be warned it's very addictive...

Yes sadly PC only, my only guess at trying it on a Mac would be under emulation which would really depend on how powerful your Mac is. I've never tried but I have run CM under emulation in both CrossOver and Fusion, useful for the odd time I just want to try something quickly on a PC but don't want to fire up the real one. Emulation has come on massively in the last decade because of improvement in hardware and how well the software can access the hardware. Also don't forget you have BootCamp on the Mac, not exactly playing on a Mac but you can try ReShade running fully native under Windows.

I will find out later for you which version of ReShade I'm using ATM, I know for certain it's not the latest, I tend to stick with a very stable, non-updated versions of most stuff on my PC since I don't trust updates to not ruin my setup ( yes, that's you I'm pointing my finger at nVidia). It's only for playing CM so it's fine tuned for that and nothing else. All my development work and real life stuff is on my Mac. DoF is such a sweet effect but a bit difficult to get right, I'll see if I can isolate the settings I use to send you an ini file for it. CM has a very simplistic depth framework which means setting up for it has very little room for manoeuvre. There are some useful tools in ReShade to help analyse draw distances which are helpful to set up DoF. The actual in-play overhead for these effects is not too bad as well, less than stuff like antialiasing. Also worth looking at is using one of the LUT shaders, these employ a simple lookup file to affect the overall colour of the game, think filters and post processing / colour grading in films. I used different ones for each of the colour ways in the images above. There are tons of LUTs available on the web for free and they are tiny files that take seconds to try on the fly. Chuck in stuff like bloom, mist and film grain and the possibilities expand exponentially. There's one effect I really like which recreates the phenomenon one has of looking out from shadow into brightly lit areas on a sunny day, one's eyes take a little time to adjust and the brightness reduces a little as our pupils contract. I think it's called adaptive lighting or adaptive bloom, something like that.

Thanks Artkin. Hopefully more (mods) to come soon.

JM did you try to copy the black smoke bmp and rename it a white or grey smoke? Also I'd be careful meddling with the nVidia or AMD files as they are supposedly optimisations for your graphics card. The other shaders doubtless contain some stuff to do with transparency and colour/lighting fx but I doubt you can actually change the colour of the smoke image files there. Think of the shaders as more like filters which will change the overall look of the game, like when you toggle movie mode.

Yes, trees that I've looked at from other games are usually done in the same way. The thing that a lot of players complain about with CM is the draw distances - the hard line that appears so quickly and how it affects their enjoyment of the game. The trees flick in and out of the various LOD stages very noticeably, though the actual models are quite gradually changed until we get the poster / billboard type. I did a load of experiments looking at how the Tree LODs are used and to see if there was much room for improvement, sadly there's not really much we can do. Where a lot of modern games use some additional methods, mist, muted colours etc to deal with distance CM only has the one very intrusive method, and otherwise everything is always in sharp focus, which is quite unnatural, and lacks any change to colour for distance as well as the lack of shadows under things like forest even on dull overcast weather to anchor the landscape. My list of criticism of how the game handles distance is quite long, mostly because I see it as one of the major weaknesses of the graphics engine, but I know that this is mostly down to the engines age and lack of things like multi-processor access, lack of optimisation for modern GPUs etc etc. I chop and change my settings whenever I see this or that new tip to improve one's game experience, better frame rates, better draw distances blah blah blah; but really these tweaks make barely any perceived difference when one has tried nearly everything. The biggest boost I got to my framerates, at least on my PC, was over-clocking my processor, better framerates meant I could up the graphics quality a little. But yes, balanced is mostly as good as it gets for gameplay. And we wait for the fabled engine update which would add optimisations reputedly... Thanks for these links I shall read all about it with interest.

Just quickly - yes it's in a 2m deep ditch IIRC (I'll need to check that) - I did some tests with indirect medium mortar using a TRP next to the PzIV bunker, heavy, full barrage with 3 tubes - no direct hits, the commander closed the hatch after about three rounds and they just sat it out, no damage inflicted. Next did some direct light mortar fire - two tubes with good LOS, left the commander buttoned up, both tubes emptied their ammo stocks, the PzIV took at least four direct hits and sustained minor damage to optics and radio, crew remained calm and returned fire eventually, taking out one mortar and suppressing the other though they'd both already fired all their rounds. Overall, not too bad, heavier artillery would no doubt cause more damage, a direct hit could take it out, in the same way as a normal medium tank. The biggest difference between this and normal tanks is that it can't take evasive action. Oh, and the crew were rated crack with high motivation, this was so that they would have a chance and stay put when under attack from the Russian tanks.

Thanks Harry. I haven't tried it with indirect HE, but it should behave in the same way as a regular Pz IV since it's based on an immobilised Pz IV G not the PaK bunker. I'll give it a go to see how it behaves - stick a TRP on it and lob some mortar bombs at it. Should be fun

Brutal! I don't play other games - I just don't have the time - so I couldn't comment on how they compare - I don't live in a bubble and have seen plenty of other games in action on YouTube etc just haven't played any, so I take your word for it. But I totally agree that there's stuff that we should be able to do in the Editor that's a bit more sophisticated than pushing a few flavor objects around and placing our forces - and for Christsake where's the blo*dy control/command-Z who forgets that when making this stuff????? I reckon there's stuff we could do to mod certain flavor objects that would add a bit more to the interiors - not furniture and the like, but walls - a fountain could be made into a wall and several in a row would make a decent wall that the pixeltrüppen would have to go around rather than through, not sure what cover or concealment they would get but it would be something. At the end of the day though I think that BF never really intended house-to-house combat to be much more than the abstraction that it is, not that they don't care, it's just not part of their vision for the game IMHO. And I doubt their professional customers are not interested in it either - they'd use real training facilities or VR to simulate it. So, sadly, we are a niche of a niche ...

Thanks Nigel. I really like the smiling Hitler Youth girl in the last shot, adds a real sense of the delusional! I'm using ReShade on all these so it's in-game post processing, the depth of field is a specific effect in ReShade. Works really well with the backdrop of your mod set.

Yes you're right. With carefully designed maps and very precise use of the walls, windows, doors and obstacles it can be done to an extent, and this is where you rightly point out that the original game maps were a bit short - my tuppence is that they simply don't have the budgets for all of this, you get what you pay for. I have no idea how much BF pay someone like BenPark but whatever it is I bet it's nowhere near enough to recompense for the real time that he spends on this stuff, and even with that it's still not enough to get everything into the maps. Which IMHO says more about the overly complex map system than the people using it. I know a good workman shouldn't blame his tools for a less than ideal outcome, but if the tools themselves are a limitation ...

This may be a limitation, I don't know what the game uses for the engine exhaust is it white or grey smoke, should be able to change it to black.

Yes, and this is where there are severe limitations in the game engine that many feel BF need to address - whether they do or not - who knows ...

Have to point out for balance that GeorgeMC doesn't use any mods to enhance for his maps but they do have a fantastic natural feel to them regardless. After playing one of his scenarios and wandering around his maps they stick in my memory like real life places. I personally appreciate the amount of time and effort it takes to leverage anything out of the game that is natural looking when frankly the graphics are not about that. Guys like Ben and Pete have put an inordinate amount of time into these games and are respected for that, and there's no doubt in my mind that given the tools they would produce stunning work, but that's not their remit. We all know the game has limitations in its appearance but some players - myself included - find that augmentations for a slightly more realistic environment provide added enjoyment to playability, whereas playing on stock maps, which lack these enhancements, is not what we want. I personally wish that BF would devote a little more time to this.

Thanks JM, better than the news in our Sunday papers no doubt!

Just posted a load of pics of the Panzer IV bunker in the screen shots thread, it's very close to release, this week all being well ... It adds quite an interesting feature for a small scenario. I ran a quick scenario against the AI with one by itself against a large armoured frontal attack and it lasted enough time to inflict serious casualties. So one or two of these on a junction supported by a few squads of heavily armed, well placed infantry can cause mayhem.

Too true, I wish we had secret sauce, but in the meantime it does encourage us to think out of the box. Yes LODS ... can be a real pain to get right. For tanks and the like I tend to just make copies of the main mdr and rename for LODs works pretty much as expected. Can't do that for trees and stuff though, just cripples the CPU/GPU. Yes - it would be very cool if in CMx3 they could introduce permanent destructibility in landscapes for campaigns. It really adds to the emersion. One only has to look at some of the scenes in Ukraine (Slava Ukraini) revealed on our TVs to see what war does VERY quickly to a landscape. Just having a touch of that in game can really enhance a scenario. Great - you're joining the children to the parents mesh? You can still edit them if needs be, just carefully selecting will allow you to move them etc; wireframe mode is your friend and limiting the section to what you can see.

So, I'm nearly finished working on a new mod for fans of late war urban environments - Berlin defence primarily but could be used in any Festung. It's an emplaced, dug-in Panzer IV inspired by those employed in Berlin by Panzerkompanie (bo) 'Berlin' which had 12 of these issued along with 10 of the more famous Pantherturms (already available in the game). The Panzer IVs were classed as Schadpanzer - damaged tanks beyond economical repair. Some were emplaced in a concrete base others were hastily dropped into holes which were then back filled and reinforced. The game doesn't allow me to easily dig a hole so I've used a ditch and an huh hum generous amount of rubble plus some artistic licence. The model is a stripped down Panzer IVG (Late) and is given an immobilised status - don't want these things driving around ... got no wheels anyway. Without further waffle: ... waiting Feuer! ... erfolg! He took out four Russian tanks and damaged three more before the inevitable - all without support ... Change of shader here - using ReShade - fantastic cinematic goodness, but I spend far too long making pretty pictures! Night fighting in Berlins shattered streets ... Got to say thanks to @NPye for his massive Berlin mod pack and encouraging all this misbehaving ... also to @RockinHarry for planting the seeds of ideas. Hopefully the mod will be out this week so look out for it if interested.

Heheh, choices, choices. Great stuff Harry loving the discarded equipment details!

Happy accident So true. War is a very messy business! George's maps are excellent; I just spend hours wandering around his maps enjoying how well made they are. I'm always thinking about ways to add more detritus to maps, simply can't get enough of it!